John Boehner on shutdown: Don’t go there

Speaker John Boehner will use a private party meeting Wednesday to lay out a new strategy to chip away at Obamacare, brushing back at House and Senate conservatives who have urged a government shutdown if the law is funded.

Boehner (R-Ohio) will give a presentation saying that the House Republican leadership supports continuous votes to build “on the successful, targeted strikes against the law that took place in the House this month and resulted in significant Democratic defections, chipping away at the legislative coalition that keeps the president’s health care law on the books,” a GOP leadership aide said on Tuesday evening.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Obamacare: Shutdown would be 'suicidal'

Government funding runs dry in two months, on Sept. 30 — just a few weeks after the House returns from a five-week August recess. A stopgap measure — known as a continuing resolution — needs to be signed into law to keep the government open.

But House leadership thinks a government shutdown would be treacherous for the GOP majority. Boehner, speaking on Tuesday afternoon at a closed leadership meeting where the strategy was discussed, warned of the political dangers of shutting down the federal government, according to sources both present and familiar with the meeting.

It all comes down to this: internal GOP projections show Republicans keeping — if not expanding — their majority in 2014. And Boehner — a veteran of the 1995 government shutdown — isn’t eager to cement the narrative that his chamber favors interrupting critical government operations.

But roughly sixty House Republicans have written to Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) urging them to use the government funding bill to defund the Affordable Care Act.

When Boehner talks to House Republicans, he will not “rule out the ‘defund’ tactic in any way,” an aide said, and the speaker “will note that [the leadership] strategy is compatible with whatever direction the conference decides to take with respect to upcoming legislation to fund government operations.”

Wednesday is a key moment for Boehner to deliver his message to the conference since lawmakers return to their districts Friday for a five-week long August recess.

In recent days, the private concern about a government shutdown has intensified among House Republican leaders. The GOP leadership meeting Tuesday was filled with complaints that members who want to shut down the government because of the health care law haven’t thought of the consequences, or next strategic steps.

Time, once again, is not on Congress’s side. The House returns from its August recess Sept. 9, just nine legislative days before the government runs out of money. There’s little time for legislative haggling.

But the political environment — roughly one year before the November midterms — makes the government funding fight, and the subsequent debt ceiling debate, politically sensitive issues. The nation is expected to hit its debt limit sometime this fall or winter.

The Wednesday strategy talk isn’t the only sign that Republicans are looking to avoid legislative catastrophes.

House Republican leadership aides have also privately told Democrats that they would be willing to pass a government funding measure at $988 billion — a level slightly higher than some conservatives hoped for.

The pair of fall fights over the debt ceiling and government funding have become two of the most important flashpoints of the 113th Congress. President Barack Obama and Democrats have said at every opportunity that they refuse to negotiate over lifting the debt limit, while House Republicans want to exact some budgetary savings or reforms to existing programs. Republican leaders have discussed new energy policy and mandatory budget savings.